Fully three-quarters of our retention schedule has event-date type
retention periods (i.e. Close of escrow + 6 years, or Termination of
contract + 10 years, or some such). Sometimes files must be stored
before that date occurs. I am working right now at putting processes in
place so that when those events occur, the date is recorded in some
fashion and people who need to know are notified.  When notified the
appropriate records coordinator will update the database with that info
(at least that's the way it's SUPPOSED to happen). At the very least, we
have a review before our annual destruction at which time records with
no event dates will be verified. For one or two record series that have
event dates that may be far in the future, we know there is no practical
way to track those, so we have made a choice to change the retention to
a close of file date, then add a retention period that covers the
longest possible scenario. We know that we will be keeping many files
for too long, but it's a trade off we are willing to make.

The idea of taking the responsibility for tracking close dates away from
future employees by attaching a set retention period early on is an
interesting idea, but how much of a trade off (keeping thing too long or
too short as a result) are folks willing to make. This does seem to be
the way that many electronic document management systems want to work --
assigning a retention based on a save date or a last use date rather
than some external event.


 
Nolene Sherman | Director of Records Management | Standard Pacific Homes
| 949.789.1668 | [log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----

"Sure, but who's going to do that follow up when it comes time for the
facility destruction?"  Hopefully, the RIM department would, but what if
facility destruction could be far in the future?  
   
  I've been thinking about this a lot lately--is information moving at
so fast a pace that we should redesign our records retention
schedules...should records series with permanent retentions be given a
shorter life?  

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